


Calamity's Echo

by TheSpectralDuke



Series: Misadventures [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Bad Echo Trips, Canon-Typical Violence, Clothed Sex, Comfort Sex, Emphasis on PLOT, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Flashbacks, NSFW, No Beta Only Bahamut, Past Character Death, Porn With Plot, Tent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:46:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26657623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpectralDuke/pseuds/TheSpectralDuke
Summary: After a successful hunt in Oakwood, Maurelin and Tahla make camp for the night only to be interrupted by an echo of the day that scarred all of Eorzea.
Series: Misadventures [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1938301
Kudos: 2





	Calamity's Echo

The forest of Oakwood echoed with the sounds of life. Wolves howled in the distance, owls hooted, coeurls sang their hunting songs under the moonlight and insects chirped as bats swooped.

In a deep thicket far from the beaten path, Maurelin Vaurtefaurt and Tahla Amariyo worked to set up a tent in the dim light of the stars. The red-eyed duskwight and the dusky keeper of the moon were at home in the darkness, both accustomed to it, but neither relished the thought of sleeping in the wild without a canopy over them to guard from the elements and wildlife.

“What happened to 'we will be back in Limsa by sunset'?” Tahla asked scathingly as she staked a pole into the ground.

“I may not have planned for our quarry to lead us on a merry tour of Oakwood rather than stand and fight,” Maurelin retorted as he slung the canopy over the pole she had just placed, securing it with gnarled rope. “But at least we have his head, and at least you _sensibly_ suggested we bring supplies just in case.”

Tahla nodded with a definite air of “I told you”, then nudged the bag containing said head with a foot. The coeurl they had been sent to hunt down was a fierce beast some man in Aleport had apparently dubbed “Scarface”, a blunt if uncreative moniker inspired by the fearsome array of scars the creature had won from previous failed hunters. But it had at last fallen to their teamwork, albeit not without leaving its mark on them both. A fang that had snapped off in Maurelin's arm taking all Tahla's skill to extract and heal, clawmarks down her back that left wicked holes in her tunic though the cuts themselves were scars now. The wounds still ached bitterly despite Tahla's best efforts but hopefully the healthy clinking of a fat sack of gil would ease that pain.

Whenever they _received_ that sack of gil, he thought ruefully as they erected another pole, only one left. The tent was just large enough for them both, but any anxieties about sleeping close together were long since gone, he mused with a look down Tahla's back, tracing scars through the slits Scarface had left in her tunic. The miqo'te's ears twitched in iron-hued hair and she glanced back, an amused smirk coming to her lips as she playfully swatted his own ear.

“Not out here,” she chided as she took the last pole.

Maurelin laughed. “We have both had a long day and earned our victory with blood and sweat. Surely you _long_ for comfort-”

Another swat clipped his other ear and brushed murky gray hair. “I would rather not be caught in the act by the wildlife, thank you,” she replied sardonically as he scowled. “If we were back in Limsa on the other hand-”

“Then teleport,” Maurelin retorted, Tahla chuckling in response. He knew already that that was out of the question, their coffers too slim to afford more than the ferry home _until_ they could collect their reward. “I sense much earning of forgiveness in my future,” his scowl flipped to a grin at the thought of exactly _how_ he would earn that. A playful gleam danced over the miqo'te's eyes, tail coiling and swaying as she chuckled.

“Back at the _Lair_ ,” she purred, staking the pole in place and then helping him to tie the canopy. It was a crude shelter but it would suit them until morning. Comfortable as they were in the dark, it was simply a risk neither of them wished to take to try and venture back to civilisation. One wrong step, one missed footing, and one or both of them could end up a monster's meal. Maurelin was rather fond of his own skin, funnily enough, and much as he might spar words with Tahla he much preferred her alive to dead for reasons beyond those of the bedroom.

Tahla made to unfold the tarpaulin they would lay upon, but she stopped as a gleam of light reflected in her amber feline eyes. “Maurelin...”

“What's wrong?” he asked, unsettled by her soft tone. Tahla was not wont to whisper nor speak without an edge to her words, at least not to him. She gestured _past_ him and the duskwight turned to look with her. A great tree broke the canopy nearby, the clearing by which they had made camp giving them view of the skies, and beyond the tree fire burned against the night.

Trails of flame passed across the sea of the heavens, blocking out the stars with a baleful radiance. Maurelin couldn't help but tense at the sight of the starshower, an unwelcome resemblance stirring buried memory. His ears waited for the roar to ring out as it had five years before followed by the forest around them becoming an inferno as it had then. Enraptured by the sight of the meteors, he could not look away even as traumatized instinct screamed for him to cast his eyes in search of the dragon's shadow. He forced panicked breath to slow as Tahla's hand found his own. Her fingers clenched tight around his as a gentle sob sounded close to his ear, the sound of her misery tearing at his innards like he had swallowed glass shards.

“Tahla?” His voice rang painfully weak, just a whisper.

“Maurelin, I... why do I feel...” Her fingers trembled against his. “Like something dear to me is gone-” A cry of pain now broke her sentence and he felt her fingers clench, painfully tight as the miqo'te fell against him. He could not take his eyes off of the starshower as it silhouetted the tree, pangs of cold nostalgia he could not understand overwhelming him.

_Hear_

Addled his mind thought Tahla had spoken at first, but that was not her voice. This voice was serene, unnaturally calm, utterly divine, and moreover it was like it sounded from _inside_ his head. With all his might Maurelin wrenched his gaze to the corner of his eye, seeing Tahla unconscious against him. Only he kept her upright, her head bowed on his shoulder and a whimper passing her lips.

Who was-

_Feel_

The voice rang like a bell through his head and Maurelin cried out as pain split his skull. The glow of meteors dragged his eyes back, his body statuesque in stillness even as he tried to reach out and hold Tahla close until her fit subsided. Overcome by terror and awe, he could do nothing but watch the stars fall toward the earth.

_Think_

He felt like his head would burst with agony, trembling as he forced himself to stay upright until darkness washed his vision away and drowned him.

XIV

_A dark room paneled all in wood. A baleful glow at the window. Two miqo'te women, one in a bed, the other sat in a chair._

“ _Mama,” Tahla said, but this was not the Tahla he knew, not quite as tall, hair a river down to the small of her back, clad in a dress he'd never seen her wear. Maurelin tried to speak but words failed him, tried to look around but he was frozen. A mute observer, nothing more._

_The miqo'te in the bed coughed as though her lungs were drenched, hacking up something viscous that stained the bedsheets a foul yellow hue. Tahla's hand patted the other woman's back hard, helping her cough out whatever the vile stuff was, not that Maurelin knew enough to guess anything besides the woman being very ill._

“ _Thank you, dear,” and as she spoke Maurelin saw Tahla in her features, the Tahla he knew if she were older still. Was this the past, then? Tahla had not spoken much of family, but he had assumed them gone or else not open to her, else she would not have trusted a stranger like he had been to help in her plans._

“ _Mama,” Tahla repeated. “They say we must pray. The woman in the strange mask told me to pray.”_

“ _Pray?” her mother repeated, the word dragged from a raw throat and bent into an ugly sound, followed by an uglier parody of a laugh. “Prayer will do me as much good as anything else, dear. If the sickness does not take me then that hells-spawned moon will.” Maurelin could not widen his eyes, but they would have otherwise, for the glow at the window he could not investigate suddenly made terrible sense._

_Tahla shook her head. “Nay, mama, they say that if we pray, the Twelve will stop the moon from falling.” Maurelin remembered it too, that stuffy lalafell with the monocle instructing him to pray for salvation. He had done so grudgingly, the Twelve had not much love for him, but everyone looked about with mad eyes for a miracle to snatch Dalamud from the sky. He remembered falling on his knees, hands so tight they hurt as he begged them with all his heart to make the moon disappear, return it to its rightful place in the heavens, whatever divine intervention would spare them._

_The two keepers clasped their hands and he heard Tahla whisper Menphina's name, for all the good it would do them. His own voice rang in his head, fervent, desperate, reciting the names of the Twelve with more feeling than he ever had before that night when all felt the world would end beneath Dalamud's impact._

_And it had all been for naught._

_The room shook and in his mind he was back there again, the forest trembling as the light in the distance turned more baleful still. The distant form of Dalamud had sprouted wings and cracked like an egg, freeing its terrible progeny to lay waste to the land._

_Tahla's prayer died on her lips as she whirled to the window with wild eyes._

“ _Wha-” her mother began before the coughing consumed her words._

_A roar echoed from the distance, the sound of old nightmares dragged to the surface so raw that Maurelin could all but hear it as he had that day. He knew what Tahla saw, Bahamut's shadow tearing free of its cocoon to soar above Eorzea as the specter of death itself. He had seen it that day and watched the dragon's power burn through the sky like the meteors that had heralded this vision of five years past._

_The forest had burned beneath the primal's fury and what little family he had became just more kindling for the flames._

“ _By Menphina,” Tahla whispered in horror. “A dragon...”_

“ _Dragon-?” her mother coughed, more of the foul bile staining her covers. Maurelin could only watch the scene powerless, after all, if this was the past he viewed then what he saw had long since passed. The world shook around them, screams ringing in his ears just as in his memory._

_Explosions roared in time with Bahamut's howls above, he wasn't sure if it had happened so fast but mayhap he had been further away from Dalamud's fall or his memory was so ravaged that he could not honestly recall. Tahla turned to her mother with eyes full of fear, he wanted to reach out and pull her through time to safety, but he had no presence and no power in her memory._

“ _We must flee!” the younger Tahla cried. “Mama, the dragon flies this way!”_

_Her mother shook her head with a bitter chuckle. “Where is there for me to go, child? Even if Dalamud's spawn does not take me, would you condemn me to die choking on my own bile?”_

_Tahla's eyes brimmed. “I-I will learn! I will find a way-!” Another explosion, dangerously close, the window shattered and shards hailed to the floor close enough that they nicked her legs. Tears of blood ran down her shins as her tail twitched in panic, her body shaking as she staggered to her mother's bedside and tugged at the woman. “Mama-”_

_He felt unclean, as though he had glimpsed her naked peeking through a keyhole. This was not meant for him to see yet he could not tear himself back to the present and stop himself from standing witness to it._

_Tahla's mother coughed. “Your father-”_

“ _Don't tell me he waits!” Tahla wailed, voice ravaged with fear and pain. “I-y-you are all I have left, mama!” He could hear the flames roaring, the screams for salvation, Bahamut's answering roars as the dragon swooped around to ravage another part of the land._

_The older miqo'te gently shook her head, a hand stroking Tahla's ear before brushing tears from her daughter's cheeks. “If I am to die, then let me die, Tahla. You are strong, keen, and whatever awaits you will rise to meet it.” Another fit of coughs, the bile splashed on Tahla's cheek as she clung to her mother. Maurelin tried with all his might to break the bonds that fettered his body and voice, but they were utterly beyond his strength to even shift an ilm._

“ _Please,” Tahla whispered in a broken voice, barely audible above the roaring and screaming, drawing back and tugging at her mother's hand helplessly. “Please, mama-”_

_The room burst around them, wood splintering apart as hungry flames smashed down. One of Bahamut's flares must have struck the building directly, obliterating it, the explosion throwing Tahla full through the window. Maurelin watched helpless, longing to step five years into the past and change fate though he knew full well he could only watch the flames lick down shattered walls, leap hungrily onto the bed, lap at the woman who lay upon it._

_Tahla screamed from outside, pain, fear and desperation making her voice utterly alien yet heartrendingly familiar. “Mama! MAMA!”_

_For a feverish moment, he thought Tahla's mother looked directly at him through the flames, but her gaze swept to the window, whatever words she might have said lost first to coughing and then to screaming. He all but pleaded in the prison of his mind to be released from this torment, and mercifully the vision obliged._

_Darkness took him once more, ears ringing with screams._

XIV

Fangs an inch from flesh.

Maurelin did not react for a moment to the wolf sniffing at him, then he realized that it stood over Tahla and in an instant adrenaline surged. With a roar he hammered a fist into the beast's snout, flailing for his axe as he scrambled to rise. Four wolves surrounded them where they had lain in the dirt, the tarpaulin still in Tahla's grip as she lay defenseless. His fingers found his weapon and he hefted it with the strength that could shatter boulders.

“Back!” he snarled, slashing at the nearest wolf as he took a step to protect Tahla. He was still in his armor, thankfully, though he ached all over where metal had dug into skin. A wolf dared to snap towards the fallen miqo'te and with a cry his axe found its skull. Blood splattered the blade and the beast wailed, his boot kicking to dislodge weapon from flesh. The wounded canine scurried back with whines of pain.

Another tried the flank, but his axe slammed down with a furious surge of aether. Raw force slammed into the beasts, overpowering them and throwing them back a pace each. “BACK!” the elezen roared. Tahla groaned beneath him and the rage lit his blood. The animals cowered but bared their fangs in answer, staring him down. One finally turned and slunk away into the undergrowth, the wounded one following, but two of them were stubborn enough to try their chances.

The first won an axe blow through its flank as a reward for trying to snatch at Tahla, but that left him open for the other. Jaws snapped about his arm, fangs scraping on his gauntlets and preventing him from bringing his blade to bear. Maurelin tackled the creature with all his might and knocked it reeling, following after it, axe swinging up.

Snarls sounded as the wolf who had retreated erupted from the bushes to tackle him. Its weight knocked him on his back and the axe fell, its fangs lunging for his throat-

A bolt of aether flew into its face, making the beast howl as it was hurled back. Maurelin seized his chance and hammered a mail-clad fist into the wolf, scrambling to his feet and reclaiming his axe. A glance back found Tahla rising with fire in her eyes, a deep yellow carbuncle forming at her feet and racing forward to join him as he cast a fierce grin at the wolves. They hesitated, tensed, then broke and ran into the undergrowth, seeking easier prey.

Maurelin heaved for breath before Tahla knocked the wind out of him with a tight embrace, the canbuncle fading away. His axe fell to the dirt as he turned in her arms to hold her tight, both of them trembling, his steel-wrapped fingers brushing her skin through the clawmarks in her tunic. He searched for words but his throat wouldn't form the sounds, so he just held her tight and breathed her scent a while. The stars were full in the heavens, the starshower long past.

“I heard a voice,” Tahla whispered.

“So did I,” the elezen replied just as softly. “Hear. Feel. Think. And then a vision.”

They parted just enough to look at each other, eyes mutually ravaged by confusion. “What did you see?” the keeper asked.

“You,” Maurelin confessed after a moment. “But not as you stand here now. Five years ago. The day Dalamud fell.”

Tahla's eyes widened as full as they could. “I saw you, the same day surely. Digging through the rubble-”

He cut her short with a kiss as her words dragged the raw memories to the surface. Splinters of wood biting his hands, bleeding cuts ignored as he desperately sifted through wreckage. Then, a hand, a torso, a _face_ -

Three corpses, blackened and shattered by Bahamut's rage while he had been spared. Mother, father, brother, all snuffed out in an instant. And he had wept over the corpses, cursing the Twelve, cursing Dalamud, cursing Bahamut, cursing the strangers who had given him hope of salvation...

Tahla brought him back with cool fingertips on his cheek, her ears pressed to her scalp. “Your family?”

He couldn't speak, so he nodded.

“I-”

He shook his head, finding a weak voice that trembled with raw emotion. “Not your fault.” This was foreign ground to him, he _liked_ Tahla, but suddenly she had seen him at his most broken without him ever consenting to it and he knew not how to react.

“Did you see my mother?” Tahla whispered. Maurelin nodded and saw the pain in her eyes, his hands tightening as he held her closer. The sounds of the forest still sang uninterrupted, because the world moved on. It always had. Gridania had not stopped to mark the passing of his family, nor had he been any better regarded for it. Though Bahamut had scarred the face of Eorzea beyond recognition that day, life had to walk forward as it always did, the survivors marching on in defiance despite not knowing how they had survived at all.

“We...” his voice faltered, “we should finish making camp.” He tried to pull away, but Tahla caught him by the arms.

“Did you see her...?”

The duskwight stared at her, the vision seared across his mind by her question. “I saw every moment.” He looked down to her feet, unable to hold her gaze as he felt a stab of undeserved shame. “I couldn't look away no matter how I wanted to, Tahla.”

“Me neither,” the miqo'te confessed, pressing her forehead to his. Her breath brushed his face. “Why? Why were we shown each other on the day of Dalamud's fall? Who spoke to us before the visions struck?”

He shook his head. “I have no answers.”

Tahla sighed softly, her lips brushed his. “Hold me,” she whispered, trembling. He tightened his grip, heart in turmoil as he kissed her back. Her fingers took the clasps of his gauntlets and snapped them open, then slid them off his hands to toss them down.

“Tahla-” he began but a kiss silenced him, amber eyes pleading. Hesitation wasn't like either of them, but he held still as she pulled at the cuirass next, undoing it with fumbling hands. The duskwight finally moved to help her undress him, cuirass joining the gauntlets, then the greaves in turn. He stood in tunic and trousers to her tunic and leggings, running his hands up her arms to pull her into him and kiss her hard. Lips met fiercely, fueled by raw need of each other as they tried to get the tarpaulin into place beneath the tent without letting one another go.

The keeper dragged him down once they managed it, burying her face in his neck as her hands slipped under his tunic to clutch and scrape at his back. Hot wet kisses burned on his skin, dancing back to his lips as she wrapped her legs around him, her every touch begging him to touch her back and take the painful past away if only for a time.

He rocked his hips into her and she whined as their sexes brushed, hands unlacing his trousers as best she could while she still shook. Maurelin groaned when her hand clutched him, caressing his hardening shaft while he worked up her tunic to bear her bralette. That too was slid up to expose nipples pebbling in the cold air, the elezen working his way backward to bring his mouth to bear upon them. Whines and hisses escaped Tahla as he suckled, too far back now for her to stroke him so she buried a hand in his hair and brushed her fingers over his ear.

This was like nothing they had done before, needy in a wholly different way. Fear rather than want drove them, the desperate need to cling to something familiar in the face of the mystery that had laid bare the most intimate aspects of their pasts to one another without consent. Maurelin _needed_ to escape into Tahla, and Tahla into Maurelin, to banish the fear of the unknown if only for this night. He drew back from her breasts to rest atop his knees, hands coming to her leggings and tugging them up a way to bare her smalls. The miqo'te stared with her pleading eyes.

“Take me,” she whispered. “Please, Maurelin.” He rubbed a finger over her slit and she writhed, whimpering as he pressed into her through damp fabric. As much as he wanted to lose himself in a frenzy of lovemaking to sweep the calamity's echoes from their minds, he was mindful enough to try and prepare her first, tugging her smalls to the side and running a fingertip through her folds. Tahla moaned as he scraped it over her peeking clit, feeling her juices flow through her petals as he touched.

“Are you ready?” he murmured as he slipped his cock free of his own smalls.

Tahla nodded desperately, tail swishing across the tarpaulin from beneath her. Maurelin spat on his fingers and sighed as he rubbed the liquid onto his engorged head, lining his body up with hers. He sank into her swiftly as he tugged her legs onto his shoulders, both of them crying out as they joined upon the tent floor. His hesitation evaporating he began to thrust deep into his lover, her purrs reverberating in her moans and cries as they descended into desperate sex.

“Maurelin!” she cried for all the forest to hear but he did not care as her name poured from his lips in answer. The ghosts of the past were gone, their echoes burned away in passionate flames, only her and him left beneath the canopy. Lost in one another they were timeless, their coupling might have lasted five minutes or five bells but all he knew was Tahla's slick walls around his shaft and her legs up on his shoulders and her voice singing in his ears. His knees ached where root and stone beneath them dug into him but he could no more stop making love to her than move a mountain, consumed by their mutual longing for this carnal comfort.

But no matter what they might wish, they could only last so long and Tahla broke first, walls growing tight around him. “Maurelin,” she gasped breathlessly, her hips rocking against him as he took her to his hilt. “I-I... I-” The words were lost forever to a cry of ecstasy, every ilm of her trembling as her eyes rolled back. She gasped through her orgasm and Maurelin too found his peak when he felt her release coat his manhood, loosing his own into her depths. He had not much to give her, spent the night before, but still he emptied all he had and slowed to a halt with shoulders heaving. Both of them shook in their afterglow, his hands on her thighs and his softening length held inside her.

The pair remained like that for a while until at last Tahla pulled her legs down from his shoulders. He saw his seed leak from her womanhood to drip on the tarpaulin, but where normally he might have teased her about it, she needed his care, not his mockery, and he the same of her. They dressed again with no words, holding each other with eyes before he crawled up to embrace her tight to his chest.

They lay side-by-side, Tahla nestling her head against his neck. A gentle kiss brushed his skin, a wordless appreciation that he returned to her forehead before fumbling for his pack. He never let her go, fumbling awkwardly with one arm to recover the blanket they had bought and wrap it around them both. Her breathing caressed his neck as she slipped into sleep that was far from peaceful, tremors rocking her slumbering body in his arms while he lay awake a while longer.

Every time she shook he kissed her again and whispered gently to her in the dark until she lay still once more. Finally he could no longer keep his vigil, tiredness tugging him down, down into the folds of his own slumber.

_Hear Feel Think_ , sang his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece I struggled a little with, originally it wasn't going to have smut but I felt really awkward posting something non-smutty with these two when their previous outings are both total NSFW smut and this one would have just had Tahla's mother dying with discretion shot and Maurelin beating up some wolves otherwise. If the comfort sex segment feels out of place, that's likely why, but the main objective of this one was to establish that neither Maurelin nor Tahla are the Warrior of Light although they both do have the Echo.
> 
> And also the Echo and Hydaelyn are actually kind of freaky if you don't have convenient exposition, I guess.
> 
> Feedback is welcomed and very much appreciated, I feel like I'm still finding my way on just how to progress with these two and their story though I definitely have ideas in mind.


End file.
